


However Stern and Iron

by dolamrotha



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - North and South, Eventual Romance, F/M, Idiots in Love, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 08:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16059080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dolamrotha/pseuds/dolamrotha
Summary: An Éothiriel AU of North and South: When a sort of crisis of faith causes Imrahil Prince to move his family from Dol Amroth to Rohan, his daughter Lothíriel finds herself in an unfamiliar land. When her life crashes into Éomer Eorl, a young and successful mill owner, Éomer and Lothíriel find their lives - and their impressions of the other - forever altered.





	1. The Best Place on Earth

**Author's Note:**

> I obviously don't own anything, including anything you might recognize as drawn from "North & South" from the BBC, or from Elizabeth Gaskell's novel. 
> 
> This is just a little bit of fun born of my love for Eothiriel and my obsession with the BBC Miniseries "North & South." After reading the Elizabeth Gaskell novel, I thought it might be fun to throw Eomer and Lothiriel into an AU based on both. There are no perfect parallels to be found here! Some events and characters may parallel closely, at times, but I'm not planning on writing a line-for-line translation. Please don't expect to read one!

Ivriniel Prince was childless and her brother, Imrahil, had a _plethora_ of children (or so she saw it).It was this fact that she used to her advantage when his youngest (and his only) daughter, Lothiriel, turned sixteen:

“Let the child come to the city and live with me a while,” she had said. “She’s old enough, now, and never been beyond the borders of Belfalas. She can return to you in the winters when it grows too cold here.” And Ivriniel was not a woman to lightly back down from such a whim.

She would take none of the boys. Oh, she loved them well enough, but it was her _niece_ she wished to show the city to, not Elphir or Erchirion. It was her _niece_ she wished to show off at all the finest parties of the season. It was her _niece_ she wished to introduce to all of the best and brightest. The boys had choices open to them, after all. They could take up arms or pens or even holy orders. They could learn to gamble or to invest. They could chase after the girls of their choice and offer flowers, compliments, and wedding bands as freely as they liked. For women, it was not so easy. Why shouldn't the girl have _chances_? 

In the end, Ivriniel won the argument (as she had known she would), and Lothiriel left her beloved Dol Amroth to live with her aunt in the city.

And, in the end, it was a happy arrangement for all involved. Ivriniel, who had quietly weathered her lonesomeness so long, reveled in her niece’s brightness, her gentle wit. Lothiriel had her fill of every lovely thing to see or taste or wear, took part in conversations sparkling with wit. Her manner grew more refined, and her friendships more expansive. She made friends with the sons of lawyers studying to become lawyers, themselves, and with young ladies of a similar rank and class. 

And yet, each year that passed, she looked forward most to her time away from everything: to the long train ride that brought her home again. That brought her to Dol Amroth. To the sea and to the breeze that still felt warm, even in the midst of winter. To the old familiar pathways and the road down to the sea. To her father’s study and her mother’s gentle voice, her brothers’ teasing….even to the aching gap they all still troubled like a missing tooth. 

Even now, as she watched the gaily dancing wedding guests spinning to the music, even as she smiled fondly at her best friend gazing into her groom’s loving eyes, the thought of home. She thought of sea-glass instead of champagne glasses, and the feel of her bare feet on the sand. So lost was she in the memory of her brothers' laughter that it was only a gentle nudge against her elbow, an almost-accidental touch of a dark-sleeved arm, that pulled her from her thoughts. She smiled and took the little glass of champagne from Henry Lebbin’s hand. 

“Are you not enjoying the festivities, Lothiriel?” He asked. A young man of twenty to Lothiriel’s eighteen, he was not handsome in a normal sense: plain of face and of expression, but with a keen, intelligent gaze and an easy smile, and a temperament that Lothiriel liked. He had been a good friend to her all of her years with her aunt and had even exchanged letters, here and there, those times she was in Dol Amroth. 

“Oh! I am, indeed. Only…” A smile curved her soft pink lips as she lifted a gloved hand to pluck a flower from her hair, tucking it into the curls of the bride’s little sister. “There,” she murmured, tapping the girl lightly on the shoulder as she grinned, skipped off into the dancing. “It seems an awful lot of fuss for a wedding,” she confessed, her voice as light and easy as a summer breeze. “When I get married, I want to just…put on my clothes in the morning and walk to the church!” 

She didn’t notice the change in Henry’s face: the lift of his eyebrows, the heartbreaking hint of hope that colored his smile. But the clearing of his throat she did notice: she turned her head to him, wondered idly why his cheeks looked so flushed when the room wasn’t warm enough. 

“You are returning to Dol Amroth, are you not?” 

“Oh, yes!” She could not keep the delight from her voice or from her eyes at the thought of returning. Her trunks were already packed, and ready for the next day’s journey. “Tomorrow.” 

“And you like it there?” 

“I love it more than I truly know how to say!” 

“Then….” He looked down into his champagne glass, idly swirled the bubbling liquid. “Perhaps…I should come to visit. I would so like to see it.” 

“Oh, yes! You should, indeed. It is the best place on earth.” 

She did not notice the startled-but-happy smile, nor that her words might indeed be misinterpreted into the invitation she did not mean them to be.

All she knew was that each turn of the clock hands brought her closer to home. To Dol Amroth. 

* * *

 

The next day saw her home by nightfall and saw her safely to her father’s waiting arms (though not without her first thought: that there was something strange and troubled in his eyes that she could not recognize).

“Oh, Papa,” she merely said into his shoulder, “I am so glad to be home!”

And home for good, this time: her aunt had at last chosen to give up the too-big city house, exchanged it for the opportunity to counsel her nephews from a small apartment in the home that Boromir had inherited from his father. It had been made known that Lothiriel would be most welcome, too, and though she dearly loved her cousin (and her aunt!) it was to _her_ home she wished to return. 

“It is good to have you home again, cygnet,” he whispered into her hair, then pulled back to look at her. “But you have grown too much! Who can say if your mother and brothers shall recognize you now?” 

“Oh, Papa, _don’t_ tease me so!” She laughed and threaded her arm through his to begin the short walk to the carriage. “Not when I have only just returned.” 

And how wonderful the walk was, even if so short! The sea air could even reach her here, at the station, with so much land still between them! She breathed in deeply, filled her lungs with it: the smell of salt and rain and something like fresh oranges. She was glad for the carriage’s open top, that she could breathe it all the way to their beautiful house by the sea. 

* * *

 

Her brothers and her mother greeted her with affection, smiled their way through the hesitating moment that should have been taken up with _**one more greeting**_ , and then - just like that - they all fell into the habits of life.

Her brother Elphir had been married just last year (an occasion she had, of course, traveled home for!) and returned to his wife and infant son at the end of that first night with promises of visits, promises which were fulfilled over and over in the weeks that followed. Lothiriel fell instantly in love with the baby, who fell equally in love with her, and her brother’s wife delighted in the times Lothiriel came to give her some brief moment’s rest.

The only thing that worried Lothiriel at all was her father, who seemed more than ever to shut himself away in his study. For hours, he kept only his books and his papers for company, and no one seemed to know why. Even when he smiled, there was something in it that had never lived there, before. And each morning, when he took his hat and left for work, there was something steely in his eyes as though he walked to battle, not to the classroom. 

So pervasive was Lothriel's happiness that she had all but forgotten the life she had recently been living. So it was with surprise that she noticed the figure that approached her through the early afternoon light, dressed too heavily for Dol Amrothian summer:

Henry Lebbin, with his hat in his hand, a bouquet of flowers in his hand. They were not the flowers that grew wild in the meadows or the woods. They were not the flowers that grew beside the sea. They were store-bought, likely store-grown, and tied with a bow of soft pink ribbon and strips of lace. 

“What a pleasant surprise!” She said when he had approached her, had linked her arm with him to walk up and down the seashore. “What has brought you all this way?” 

He looked startled, troubled, and her own brow gently furrowed. What had she said, she wondered, to surprise him so? 

“I….I said I would come to visit,” he replied, and looked out to the horizon rather than at her. “As you told me I should.” 

“I….oh.” 

Even with her years of city seasons, she knew her own failings. She knew that she sometimes forgot the veiled way of speaking men and women took there, so at odds with the polite honesty of the region of Belfalas. It must have been so at the wedding, she thought. She must have said something she had not meant to say. 

Suddenly, the flowers he still held in his hands looked dark and ominous as storm clouds. Suddenly, their lovely heads looked like they might droop from sheer weariness. 

“Miss. Prince, I…” 

Oh, she thought. Oh, no. He had always called her by her given name, as she had called him “Henry.” They had always been _friends_ , had they not? She could only hope it was a funny turn of phrase, that he didn’t mean to… 

“I came to ask your father for his blessing. I….I want to make you an offer. Of marriage, you see. We could live here, if you wished, in Dol Amroth. I could give you….” 

“Henry, I…I beg your pardon, but….” 

She withdrew her arm as gently as she could, looked up at him with wide and pleading eyes.

In those eyes, he must have seen her answer. His dark eyes clouded and the easy smile vanished, and there was a tension n his shoulders that had never before been there.

She felt the change between them like a cold wind off the sea and, and despite the warmth of the present day, shivered where she stood. 

“Forgive me, Miss. Prince,” he said, all cold formality again. “When you spoke of your own wedding, I thought…all that about walking to the church, I…” frustration seemed to pool in him, and there was new hardness in his eyes when he turned to her, though the hardness of hurt and not of mean spirit. “Ladies of Minas Tirith would not speak so of their own wedding with a man if they did not wish to…” 

“Henry, I’m sorry.” She reached for his hand, wished to offer what comfort she could, but he pulled it away firmly (though not by any means ungently). 

“I beg your pardon, Miss,” he said. “For any embarrassment, I have caused you. I must be going. I must…I must catch the next train.” 

“Of course. But Henry…Mr. Lebbin. Please, let us part as friends? Let there not be any ill-feeling between us.” 

To his credit, the young man softened, extended his hand to grasp her own with gentleness. 

“I wish you well, Miss. Prince,” was all he said as he gave the little hand a gentle, formal kiss. “As always. Good day.” 

And, with that, he was gone. 

* * *

 

She had thought her first proposal would linger long after it was offered. That, whether accepted or rejected, it would be a thing she lingered over, worried over, polished like a pearl until she could see her own reflection in it. She had thought it would teach her something more than “yes” or “no,” more than how to hear such words spoken in relation to herself. 

Perhaps poor Henry’s proposal might have met that fate. Perhaps she would have wondered if she had given him the proper answer. Perhaps she would have wondered if she should have accepted, but her father’s news shook all such notions away. 

“Leaving?” She gasped, her teacup clattering. “Leaving Dol Amroth? But father…” 

“Imrahil.” Her mother’s gentle voice, soft as it was, always seemed to cut straight through all other noise. “Why?” 

Her father sighed and leaned heavily upon the mantel. The university he had been leading, it turned out, had required all who taught there to sign a sort of contract of belies, would now require each professor to speak strictly on those lines. Her father had not been able to sign it. Her father, it turned out, had been losing his faith in the establishment long before this time had come. And now, it seemed to him, the best solution was to move. There was a school in Rohan now looking for a man to take a position there. It would not pay as much, it would not offer quite as much prestige, but it would give him the freedom he could not sacrifice. 

“Elphir, of course, shall remain with his wife and child. Where they live now is up to them, and them alone. Erchirion, you too may seek your fortune where you will, but Lothiriel…” 

There was an apology in her father’s eyes that Lothiriel did not seek. It nearly stole the breath from her. 

“You could stay with us, Thiri,” Elphir offered. “We haven’t very much room, but…” 

“No.” Lothiriel drew her breath deeply, looked at her father and her mother. They had lost one son already, they would leave behind their home, she had already been away from them so long…! “Father, I will go.” 

She was sure she did not imagine the relief in her father’s eyes or the tears that trembled in her mother’s. She was sure the choice was right even as she felt the pain of parting from Dol Amroth already building. 

Imrahil nodded, looked down at the fire in the grate, and sighed so heavily that Lothiriel wondered if he could feel it, too: the pain of leaving this place that they all loved so well. The place that Amrothos had left. The place that had seen them all grow. 

But when he looked up at them again, it was with a steady eye, a straighter spine, less weariness in the set of his mouth:

“We will leave within the fortnight.” 


	2. Meduselde Mill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lothiriel and Eomer get off on the wrong foot. There are many parallels. We all laugh at the idea of Rohan being the "industrial North."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick little chapter to set events moving along at a bit of a quicker clip! This one isn't really my favorite, but there are better chapters coming.

The fortnight passed in such a frenzy of activity that it hardly seemed to pass at all. She blinked, and it was gone. Perhaps, she thought, it was better that way. Like anything painful, perhaps it was best if it happened fast. If she couldn’t linger over her goodbyes until all she could feel was the sorrow of leaving. Instead, she could only nurse the ache of that sorrow as their train brought them north, mile by mile. With every mile that passed, she could feel her heart sinking. They would be so far from the sea! The landscape was so different! And she had heard that the people there were hard and fierce and rough. Even the university would be like nothing they had left behind them. It was new, and only sparsely attended - - so she had heard. Her father would have to supplement his teaching by taking in private students, one of which he’d found already: a Mr. Eomer Eorl, the owner of the largest textile mill in the city of Edoras, who had been introduced to her father by their mutual friend, Aragorn Telcontar. 

It was this Eomer who had helped them find a house in the strange city they were now approaching, and Lothiriel could not help but feel one part grateful and one part…wary. She did not like the sense it gave, of something like indebtedness. He was a stranger, after all, and how could they be sure he would not use such help against them? 

It was not like her to be suspicious, and this suspicion seemed to sour in her stomach. She sighed and supposed she had spent much too long in the city, where everything came at a price. 

“Are you alright, dear?” 

Her mother’s hand was warm, a bracing gentle pressure on her wrist and Lothiriel covered it with her own. 

“Just fine, Mama. Only….tired, I suppose. I never knew moving was such an exhausting endeavor!” 

“That,” her father said with a chuckle as he looked up from his book, “Is part of the reason we’ve never attempted it.” 

But it wasn’t the whole reason, and the realization of that settled around them heavily, until her father - his attention now pulled from his book - took note of the landscape and the slowing train. 

“We’ll be arriving soon,” he said, and glanced at his watch. “Just on time.” 

* * *

She had heard that Rohan had once been all horse-raising. That it had been the home of a semi-nomadic horse people, only sparsely populated with anything like real cities. But times had changed and dragged the old, stubborn place along with them. Farms remained on the outskirts, but in the places where the soil had been too stony, factories sprang up instead of crops: textiles and cotton mills, mostly, though those in the southern cities always laughed at the thought of wearing cotton and not linen. They were a stubborn people still, that much was plain to see, plain even to a stranger’s eye. But some had taken thoughts of cities into their heads with all abandon and decorated accordingly. 

Which was to say: the wallpaper in their new house was enough to give Lothiriel a headache just at the sight of it. And the smirking landlord wouldn’t let them take it down! It was the latest fashion, he insisted! She would have to take it up with Mr. Eorl. 

And so, she decided, that was just what she would do. It was bad enough they would have to live on so much less than what they were used to! Bad enough they would be paying thirty pounds a year for the cramped little house! Let the mat least have something soft to look at when the days were over. 

….Anyway. She would have to meet this stranger someday, wouldn’t she? And her curiosity about the mills had already grown so much as to be distracting. So, much to the landlord’s consternation, she nodded at him, tied her hat’s ribbons neatly, and set off for Meduselde Mills. 

* * *

Eomer Eorl was no fool: he knew that his mill was not beautiful. All gears and metal and whirling white fluff, worked by men and women in rough-spun clothes. Nor did he look upon it with the satisfied eyes of a man who had seen a dream come to fruition. It was no dream, only a means of living, and for that, he was proud enough. After the untimely deaths of his parents, followed years after by his uncle and cousin, Eomer had carved a life for himself and his sister from nothing. This mill had put a roof above their heads and food upon their table, and for that, he could not help but be proud. 

Yet there was always a part of him that longed for something else, for a life he  _had_ dreamed of: sweeping plains and thundering hooves, a full stable of horses that stomped hooves for his attention in the early mornings. 

Someday, he always thought. Someday, he would have that. But the days had all passed uniformly, one by one, and the day-to-day struggle of first establishing, then maintaining, then overseeing the mill allowed for little by way of dreaming. 

Still, he thought, as he braced his arms upon the rail and looked down over his workers, It was not a bad life, all in all. 

The day was close to finished, now: soon the mill would fall silent for the night. His men and women would go home to their families and their bread, and he would return to eat dinner with his sister. It should have been just another clockwork moment, one that fits into the next until the final bell. 

Instead, his eyes caught the flicker of light like a coal from the fire, and his gaze narrowed - - through the lifting snow-white fluff - to the face of the man with a hand cupped ‘round a flame. Terror clenched like a fist upon his heart: the image of a hundred bodies laid out after another factory’s accidental fire rose up like a ghost in a story. Blind with it, he bellowed as he barreled down the stairs like a lion roused from its sleep. 

“ _ **YOU**_!” 

* * *

Her eyes had barely had the chance to adjust to the strange, hazy whiteness of it all: the floating fluff and the figures that moved like shadows in it, the machinery that whirred and clanked and moved like giant beasts in some convoluted fairy-tale. She had barely lifted a gloved hand to cover mouth and nose, barely had a chance to cast her gaze up to the large, strong figure suspended overheard by some platform overlooking all inside. Barely had time to register the fact that she looked at the man who had done so much to help them, when the shout echoed through the mill: “ ** _YOU_**!” 

The sure, steady beat of her heart faltered at the deep rumble of the voice, and despite herself, she found she had shrunk back against the wall, watched as the figure bolted down the stairs and swung around a nearby machine, all in pursuit of a small and ragged man. His hand reached out, caught the smaller man hard by the collar, jerked back with so much strength that the pursued fell backward, hard, and Lothiriel could not help her gasp. But it was not over: the smaller man jumped up and struggled, flailed out with ineffectual fists, only to receive a blow. 

“Stop!” The cry was torn from her before she quite knew what she was doing, and yet the scene only continued: “Stop! Please, please stop!” 

She knew only that the poor man was smaller than the other, knew only that a man with so much power shouldn’t treat anything poor and powerless so! And it lit within her a boldness otherwise but little seen. 

Like a bird, she moved down the aisle between them, reached out to close her hand upon the mill-owner’s shoulder. Roughly - - although without hurting her - - he jerked his shoulder free, fingers still clenched around his worker’s collar. 

“What are you doing here?” He demanded, just as the landlord rushed up behind them, stammered his apologies. “Who is she? What is she doing here?” 

“I….I only wished….I wished to speak to you about the house! My name is Lothiriel Prince.” 

Was it regret she saw in the green eyes that met her gaze? Resignation? 

“Please,” she pleaded. “Please, let him go.” 

“Oh, I’ll let him go.” 

Eomer’s hand opened, shoved the man forward, and he stalked forward to press the other back. “I’ll let him go. And if he ever shows his face in this mill again, he’ll get worse than let go. Does he understand?” 

“Please, sir,” the man mumbled, wide-eyed and slack-jawed in fear, “Please, I’ll not be doin’ it again, sir, I promise, only let me work!” 

“GET OUT! And you…” He spoke to the landlord, though his eyes seemed to fasten on her face. Seemed to gravitate to her own gaze, as though he could not help it. And in those eyes she saw a million things, all conflicting: anger, yes, but hidden underneath….was that fear she saw? And was there grief beneath it? 

“Please,” she said, hoped she could appeal to the fear, the grief, and so assuage the anger “Wouldn’t you only reconsider…?” But anger overcame the fear and grief, and the gaze turned hard and cold. 

“I said,” he said, each word was bitten off, his gaze still fixed hard and unblinking upon Lothiriel’s, blazing still with anger. “Get that woman out of here!” 

“Please, miss,” she heard the landlord say. She felt the tug upon her arm. And though she did not wish to be the first to break this stare, she knew the time had come. She could not stay, and so she turned and left the mill with chin held high. But in her heart, she couldn’t help but hold fast to the horror of it, the bleak and chilling room.

 _I have seen hell_ , she thought, turned back to look behind her at the swirling white, the watching eyes _. And it is white. Snow white_


	3. Without a Handshake

He did not see Lothiriel Prince again for several weeks, and yet he found himself thinking of wide grey eyes more often than he wished. They were always bright, pale in bright light, always fringed with soft, dark lashes, and always they were reproachful. Reproachful and tinged with fear: the only thing about the afternoon that he regretted. Throwing the man from his factory, never to be seen again? That he did not regret. But that the daughter of Imrahil Prince who, as it turned out, was older and more beautiful than he’d expected (he had expected a child, at the most a girl of fifteen, not a young woman) should see him in such a rage....and should be made afraid? 

That, he did not like. 

“You are troubled, Eomer.” 

His sister had not asked a question: it had been a statement, said over the rim of her teacup. It had been them and only them for so long that they knew each other’s habits. They knew each twitch of each expression, the meaning of a lifted brow or down-turned mouth. 

“I wouldn’t say troubled,” he replied. And though Eowyn’s smile disappeared behind her lifted cup, he knew it was there nonetheless. 

“No? Then what _would_ you call this state? I can’t remember the last time you behaved so strangely.” 

She was enjoying this far too much, he thought. Shouldn't she be more concerned, not so full of smiles? Eomer grumbled and cast his eye back down upon the newspaper that hung limply upon his knee. 

"I wouldn't call it anything." 

"Oh, certainly." 

They drank the rest of their tea in silence broken only by the rustle of Eomer's paper and the scratch of Eowyn's pen. 

"Did you know the Princes have a daughter?" He asked as he folded the paper, hoped he sounded more nonchalant than he felt. (And should, he thought - with not a little anger - have felt more nonchalant than he did.) 

"The Princes? The ones you had to find that house for?" 

"The same." 

"I seem to have some vague notion of their having a daughter, yes. Why do you ask? Is she...the reason for this trouble?" 

"Yes, she - " The words caught in his throat, and he turned to his sister with a glare. " _No_." 

A moment ago, he had had half a mind to tell his sister what had happened in the mill all those weeks ago. 

"She came to me about wanting to change the wallpaper, of all things." 

"Oh?" 

Much to his displeasure, his sister did not seem to find this as desperately boring as he might have hoped. He cleared his throat rather than continue, shuffled his newspaper and stood up. 

"You should go meet them, Eowyn. All three of them. I would like it if you would. They know no one here. The daughter is only a little younger than you, and I am sure she could do with a...friend." 

For a long moment, Eowyn did not answer. She simply looked at her brother with cool, clear eyes, studied him so long that he felt as though she must have seen straight through him. And her smile twisted down, becoming not quite a scowl and yet nothing exactly pleasant, either. What she had read upon his face, Eomer could not guess. He simply looked back at her with a clear-eyed gaze of his own. 

"Very well," she said at last. "I will visit them. Though I am sure we can have nothing at all in common." 

In fact, she had already fixed it within herself that she would not much like this daughter of the Princes. Somehow she had bewitched Eowyn's brother, of that she was certain. Never before had she caught him gazing wistfully. Never before had she caught him with that strange and sudden little smile he'd seemed to have adopted these last weeks. Gondorian women were said to play with men as cats played with mice, and she would not see her brother meet a mouse's fate. 

And yet his smile almost melted her, even as he stood to leave the room, as he touched her shoulder and ducked to kiss the top of her head before he left.

* * *

 

Evening crashed down upon Rohan in dark clouds and thunder that was only just beginning to rumble when Eomer left his mill. He knew it would soon become a full-blown thunderstorm, and yet his pace never quickened. He simply walked down the old, cobbled streets, cut his usual broad-shouldered, black-coated figure through the hunched shoulders clad in shabby coats. 

With each step, he told himself that the anticipation was simply to see Imrahil, his friend. Mere weeks the man had been in Rohan, and yet already Eomer had found in him a friend, a mentor, something of a father figure he had never known. The man was kind and learned, and Eomer was sure he owned more books than all of Rohan contained on its own. 

And yet. 

And yet. 

There was something different in this anticipation, something that fluttered strangely. 

Surely, after all, Lothiriel would be present in her father's house in the evening. And it would be the first time he had seen her - truly seen her - since that strange day in his mill. 

He shouldn't think of her at all, he knew. He knew that there was no reason for it. If she looked at him at all, it would be with disdain or - worse - that half-hidden fear he had seen there, last. The fear that haunted him still, the fear he had never meant to cause. 

His quick rap upon their door was answered by a portly woman in a dark dress, who looked at him so imperiously she wondered how she could be any sort of servant. 

"I am Eomer Eorl - I have come to see Imrahil Prince." 

She led him through the first floor of the small house, then up a narrow flight of stairs and through a plain wooden door. 

The sitting room they entered was small and sparsely furnished, but comfortable. Three people stood to greet him: Imrahil himself, an elegant woman he assumed to be the wife of Imrahil, and - tucked in a corner with a hoop of embroidery in her hand - Lothiriel. 

He could not help but look at her: the way the light fell upon her long lashes and cast shadows on her cheeks, the soft curls of dark hair that escaped from her pins. But he could help how long he looked at her, and he tore his gaze away before it could be noticed how much he wished (despite himself) to look much longer. 

All the rest of the evening, while Eomer and Imrahil spoke, he found that his eyes followed her slightest motion. When she lifted her needle, it glinted in the firelight. When she pressed the needle through the fabric, the pearly glint of her teeth caught the soft flesh of her lower lip. Most fascinating of all, sometimes the grey of her eyes peered up through the soft shadow of her lashes when she caught a strain of conversation she liked. And then she spoke. 

Her voice was quiet, yes, but confident, the softest lift of a flute through the bass tons of her father. Once, she merely added her own thought to something her father had said about Plato. The next, she had barely looked up from her sewing, but she had corrected Eomer with a soft sharpness that earned a stern "Lothiriel," from her father. And yet Imrahil had smiled, too, with a father's pride, and Eomer could not help but smile, too. 

The night wore on, the conversation unspooled, and rain pattered against the panes of the window. Slowly, Lothiriel's needle stopped glinting. He watched in utter fascination as her head tipped back against her chair, as the embroidery slipped from sleep-limp fingers. 

"I think we have bored your daughter to sleep," Eomer said quietly and nodded toward her. But as Imrahil turned, her eyes flickered open and she straightened, set aside her embroidery. 

"No," she said at last, and shook her head. Her smile - he knew - was meant for her father. But, sleepy and soft, it passed over him first, and Eomer felt it like a physical blow. Guiltily, he wondered what it might feel like if that smile had been truly turned on him. If he had the freedom to tuck those loose curls behind her ear. "I apologize. It was the rain, I think." 

She stood and moved amongst the tea-things, her hands graceful among the spoons and cups. As the guest, it was Eomer's cup she prepared first. She made it just the way he had taken his first cup, her memory of it perfect. She barely seemed to look at him as she approached and held the cup and saucer out, but to the shock of both of them, their fingers brushed when he reached for it.

It trembled like a shock between them, and Lothiriel's grey eyes went wide, soft lips parted just a little on a silent gasp. Her skin beneath his hand was soft and passed like silk from underneath his fingers. All time seemed to freeze, to narrow down to nothing but that moment until, at last, he had collected himself enough to murmur his thanks. Without a word, she turned from him, prepared her father's tea with admirable calm. (Or was it admirable, he wondered? Had she felt the shock of contact, too? Or was she unaffected as she looked?) 

When she turned again, he thought - for just a moment - that he saw something troubled in her gaze, like a breeze that ruffles the surface of the water. But with a blink, it was gone. 

"I think I shall retire for the night, Papa," she told her father. "I am...very tired." 

"Of course, my dear," Imrahil replied, and once again all stood. Lothiriel passed from her father to her mother, kissed their cheeks, then stood before Eomer like a bird about to fly. 

"Good night, Mr. Eorl," she said quietly. "It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance." 

Their eyes met and held, and Eomer forgot just what he was supposed to do. At last he nodded, slowly, and extended a hand. 

Lothiriel's grey eyes fell upon that hand as though he had raised it against her and lifted her chin. She gave a little curtsy, said one last goodbye, and was gone. 

In her absence, Eomer's fingers curled into his palm and grasped only empty air. 

 


End file.
